


We Didn't Start the Fire

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Boys Being Boys, Crushes, Galaxy Garrison, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Investigations, M/M, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Pre-Series, these two...love them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2018-12-30 06:58:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12103254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Matt didn't expect to meet the legendary Takashi Shirogane in the hallway at three in the morning. He also didn't expect it to turn into an alien hunting expedition, but after seeing something peculiar through the telescope in the observatory he finds himself delving further into the mystery, and he can't decide what's stranger: the unidentified aircraft in the sky or his new and growing relationship with the garrison's golden boy.





	1. Mr. Fahrenheit

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I've been planning this for a long time, and I aim to get about 15,000 words before I'm done. I'm posting this now because it will help me feel motivated to continue this story, which means a lot to me. It deals with a lot of personal topics and I hope it will also speak to you. 
> 
> Please feel free to give me feedback and support with this fic, I wouldn't be able to thank you enough.
> 
> Voltron Tumblr: ofgalransandalteans.tumblr.com  
> Main Tumblr: magnumopi.tumblr.com
> 
> Title Credit: We Didn't Start the Fire by Billie Joel.  
> Chapter Title Credit: Don't Stop Me Now by Queen

Matt wanted to head up to the observation deck that night to see the stars. His sister, Katie, insisted that he take a photograph of the sky through the garrison’s high-tech lens on the third of April, because that would be her sixth birthday and she wouldn’t accept anything else. While he wasn’t technically allowed up there, he didn’t do anything wrong if no one caught him; Matt would be in and out with enough time to finish the grueling research paper due the next morning. 

So, he didn’t really expect anyone else to be walking down the halls at three in the morning, so it came as a shock to him when he collided with someone’s chest as he turned a corner. It was dark and he watched the figure stumble backward and didn’t realize that he had spilled his soup over himself and the cadet until he felt the juice trickle down his hand and stain his uniform. _So much for that_.

“Oh, man, I’m so sorry!” the boy exclaimed, keeping his voice low with the proximity of the dorm rooms in mind. He extended his hand to help the other boy up, but then noticed the familiar glasses and shaggy haircut and recoiled. “Wait, Matt? What the hell are you doing?”

Oh, shit, it was Cadet Takashi Shirogane - better known as Shiro, the esteemed student and budding exploration pilot amongst both students and faculty at the Galaxy Garrison. _Everyone_ seemed to like him, and, honestly, so did Matt. He was a natural leader with a good sense of responsibility and funny as hell - a _legend_ , and he couldn’t help being a bit jealous of him and a bit intimidated. Honestly, who wouldn’t be?

He huffed and stood up, brushing his pants off and flicking a piece of chicken off of his garrison tunic. “Yeah, uh, wait, dude, are you eating cold chicken soup at three in the morning? What the hell are you doing?”

Shiro put a hand against his chest, mock offended. “I was hungry! And, uh, I stayed up late…”

“To finish the paper assigned three weeks ago?”

“Uh, yeah…”

“Okay, me too,” Matt said. Their biology teacher assigned them a research paper on the basics of hematology and the effects of microgravity on the flow of blood and general circulation - a snoozefest if anyone asked him, but it was the prerequisite to the chemistry class he had been dying to take. At least he wasn’t the only one who gravely procrastinated and was totally screwed for the next morning.

Although, it was odd to see Shiro so...disheveled like this. A flop of his hair covered his right eye, his clothes were rumpled and covered with soup and this was _so_ not the garrison’s beloved golden boy he had heard so much about. In the darkness of the hallway, both of them tired and overworked, there were no more barriers between them because no one else was there to watch the exploration pilot chat up the nerdy communications officer. It was a wonder that no one came out to report them.

Shiro leaned against the wall, looking at Matt with a raised eyebrow. “So, what are you doing, wandering around the hallways this late?”

Ha! As if he had the right to be suspicious of him when he was the one taking canned soup from the kitchen. But he couldn’t rat on him, because then Matt could do the same and he had evidence of Shiro’s juvenile delinquency all over his fresh tunic and staining the sacred garrison floor - so this was him being genuinely curious, and that came as a surprise to Matt who had never had anyone besides his family be interested in what he was doing. 

So he decided to tell the truth, because why the hell not? “I’m sneaking into the observatory to print a high-quality picture of the sky for my baby sister - it’s for her birthday.”

“Cool. Do you want me to be your lookout?”

Matt blinked and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He wanted to say he was surprised that Shiro would be so unaffected by a defiant act of misconduct, but he had already watched the boy spill cold chicken soup over himself at three in the morning with their instructors sleeping in the rooms nearby. This was a side of him that he hadn’t expected, even if he only knew Shiro through his reputation - no one had mentioned anything of this nature. It made him wonder if the pilot deliberately hid his misbehavior or it was simply that no one was paying any attention to what he was actually doing.

Playing it cool, he shrugged, nodded and continued walking down the hallway. Shiro walked behind him - another thing that came as a surprise, because Matt always heard about what a great leader Shiro was in flight simulations and group projects. But, hey, it felt good to be the one followed and not the one doing the following. He could stand to do this more often.

“How far along are you in Ryu’s paper?” Shiro asked. Matt couldn’t tell if he was trying to make small talk or if he wanted to squeeze as many ideas out of him as possible to make his own life a bit easier. He would bet on the former, and he could see himself doing the same thing.

“I have my outline done,” Matt said. “And my sources ready...and most of my introductory paragraph. Just gotta do the body paragraphs and put it all together. You?”

“My outline is complete. I have most of my sources but no actual writing yet,” he replied. “Hey, did you happen to use the textbook _Gray’s Anatomy_? Apparently, no one else even knows about it but I found it in the library under -”

They both hopped behind a pillar as a surveillance drone passed through. It was odd, because they never stayed out after midnight and were rarely used on the weekdays because most students actually wanted to stay inside and sleep. Neither of them spoke after that scare, nor did they walk as quickly and precariously, and it was only another thousand feet of corridors before they reached their destination.

Getting into the observatory was easy for Matt; he had only done it about a hundred times. There was nothing more relaxing than being alone in a big room with the entire galaxy shining over his head, and the telescope in the corner was a beauty he could only dream of possessing. As long as he didn’t adjust it, he had no qualms looking through the lens and watching the stars twinkle and the planes fly overhead. It was the best view he had ever seen of outer space.

He peeked into the scope, in awe for the millionth time over the beauty of it all. Procyon was the first star he spotted towards the east and he knew that Katie would easily identify it, and she’d point to it in joy as she rambled on to their mother about what the sky looks like in April and all the stars in each constellation. Matt smiled to himself and moved over to the computer, requesting a basic color print which would look far better than anything he could ever muster. All he had to do now was sit back and wait.

Shiro was standing ramrod straight with his back against the door, one eye discreetly looking out the window of the doorway and his lower lip stuck out in a sort of pout. No one had ever actually walked in on Matt before, he just wanted some company, so it was a bit comical to see him so anxious about getting caught. And he still had the empty can of soup in his hand with the spoon sticking out the top and a pea was stuck on his collar. This was the famous Takashi Shirogane.

It took him a few moments for it to even register that Matt was even laughing at him until he was teary-eyed and shaking with a quiet wheeze. He looked like he wanted to protest, but on what grounds? This was his first time breaking into a classroom - he was basically a virgin! And Matt was taking his breaking-into-classrooms virginity!

“Come over here, dumbass,” Matt whispered through his deep breaths. Shiro didn’t do a very good job of hiding the embarrassed little smile on his face, and Matt had to bite down on another fit of teasing laughter as he gestured towards the telescope. “Don’t touch it, but you can look - see? Isn’t it awesome?”

Shiro held his arms behind his back and bent down to see. His mouth was agape and he moved his hand over one eye to allow the other to see more clearly. It was obvious that he was astounded, searching through the mass of stars against the dark swirl of colors, from green to red, and noting the constellations adorning it. He had been staring at it for so long, Matt wondered if he had done the same his first time. Losing track of time wasn’t uncommon for him, especially with a sight like that.

The printer whirred and whined until Matt pulled the image from the feeder. A bit of ink stuck to his finger and he blew on the paper so it could dry quicker, because Katie would _hate_ having it if it was all blurry because her brother was too stupid to keep his grubby fingers off of it. She was in _that_ phase of her childhood, which seemed to have started when she was two years old and no one knew when it was going to end. At least she hadn’t learned any of the super-duper bad words...yet.

“Matt,” Shiro called, the strength in his voice wavering. He took a step back. “Come look at this.”

“What the fuck is that?” Matt asked, squinting to get a better look. In the lower right quadrant was a black mass about the size of a marble with no definitive shape. It seemed to be slowly traversing the sky and if it wasn’t for the dim purple light that it emitted, he would’ve written it off as a smudge without a second thought. Matt had never seen anything of the sort, and he was certain that Shiro hadn’t, either. It had to be one of the darkest shades of black he had ever seen - it barely looked three dimensional. 

Was this...a UFO?

Matt immediately checked the records from previous days, filing through paper after paper for any documentation on an unidentified aircraft. Shiro, riddled with hypervigilance, guarded the door carefully. There had to be an answer for this, they couldn’t be the only ones who knew about it! Surely there had to be _something_. And when he couldn’t find a single source, he thought that either it was deliberately being hidden or he and Shiro were the _first ones to even spot it_. The idea had his blood pumping and his hands shaking. This was it. This was key evidence to extraterrestrial life and he was witnessing it firsthand.

The moment was less glorified than he had anticipated in his daydreams. Goddamnit, it was four in the morning and he had class in three hours and he had barely started the body paragraphs to his essay, and he was in a room with the famed Takashi Shirogane guarding the doorway and this was highly, highly illegal. If they were to get caught with this information under their belts, it would most certainly lead to expulsion and end Matt’s career before it even started. The sweat forming on his neck and sticking to his uniform wasn’t helping anything either, and he was almost relieved when Shiro spoke.

“Go, now!” he hissed, and Matt barely remembered to grab the print before sliding through the cracked door. He and Shiro ducked behind a lab table, listening to a group of staff file into the room. It was hard to hear them through the walls, but he was certain that they, too, were confounded by the sightings. They did know of them, but there was no record on file, which was suspicious to say the least. He knew that was the first thing a scientist was supposed to do when observing a phenomenon. Especially one of such proportions.

Cupping his hands to the wall didn’t help with his hearing, unfortunately, because they spoke in hushed voices as if they were the delinquent students sneaking by their teachers. However, it did help him feel the vibrations of someone else coming down the hallway into where they were hiding. Shiro grabbed him by the collar and held his hand over his mouth, Matt’s body pressed against his chest as they waited underneath the teacher’s desk. Iverson’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet when he greeted the other faculty, and Shiro took that chance to drag Matt to the closing door and make a run for it. Holy shit, they were going to be in so much trouble. 

“Don’t stop running,” Shiro whispered. He was still holding onto Matt’s forearm, and if he had been any shorter he’d be hanging onto Shiro like a kite in the wind. 

It was by a stroke of luck that a droid didn’t spot them or the sound of their feet hitting the ground didn’t wake anyone up. Surely someone had heard.

They decided that they were safe once they hit the boy’s main room, and Matt skidded to a halt. Adrenaline had kept him sprinting from the classroom, but his otherwise unfit body was shaking with the exertion. Thick hair stuck to his face and he rested his hands on his knees as he caught his breath. Shiro, on the other hand, had barely even broken a sweat. Still, he sunk to the floor with Matt and let out a tired laugh. Their eyes met, and they both quietly asked each other _what the hell just happened?_

 _Aliens. Aliens just happened._ But Shiro, trying to be rational, or just wanting to calm himself down, suggested otherwise.

“Maybe it was a new piece of equipment they were trying out,” Shiro said. Matt rolled his eyes. “Dude, it’s not that hard to imagine. We don’t need to blow this out of proportion.”

Matt scoffed. “ _Yeah_ , uh huh, uh huh. _Totally_ , Shiro, that was totally our technology. Oh yeah, we can _totally_ build an aircraft out of vantablack, totally within our range of capabilities. I think the fuck not.”

“Uh…”

“We might as well be building water on the moon! There was no way that was anything we could’ve done. Didn’t you see Iverson’s face? He looked _horrified_.” Matt gestured dramatically with his hands while Shiro looked at him with wide eyes, unsure of how to respond. Who knew that Holt could be aggressive? Certainly not him.

Takashi sat on his knees, running his fingers through the loose clump of hair near his widow’s peak. Matt checked his watch, and green glowing numbers revealed that they had two and a half hours left to finish their papers and try to get an inkling of quality sleep. All while processing what had just happened, and what they planned on doing with the information because they couldn’t just sit on their asses and pretend that nothing happened at all. 

He scratched the back of his head. “Uh, sorry. But I have a point. That wasn’t nothing, and I want to figure out. It’s fine if you don’t want to, but at least try to not say anything that could incriminate me or you. Just pretend we didn’t see it, or that we were even up at all.”

Shiro looked taken back, and Matt almost tried to retract his statement. “Who the hell says I don’t want to investigate? I’m just as curious as you, dude. Look, I know a quiet spot we can sit during our lunch break - meet me after class and we can figure it out there.”

“Uh, sure,” Matt agreed. Shiro rose, and damn did he look bigger from the floor. And no, he wasn’t staring, just...observing. Like all scientists do. “Goodnight.”

He smiled down at him. “Good luck with your essay, dude. ‘Night.”

Matt had more of it done than he did, so it meant a little bit more that he went out of his way to remember that they were both in the same sinking boat. And, shit, that boat was going down to hell with the little bit of time he had left.

Still, he took the time to watch the other boy leave. Matt hadn’t realized how close Shiro’s room was to his - across the hall and three doors to the left. He always seemed so far away from him, even though they shared three classes together that year and another year had a whole schedule together.

Just...he was Matt Holt, a scientist with a family history of excelling in academics and he was Shiro, who seemed to have come out of nowhere and wipe the whole school of its feet. He never thought to try talking to the guy outside of class, but then there they were, planning on taking more time out of their day to discuss the alien sighting they had witnessed the night before. He had no idea what he was getting himself into.


	2. Like a Stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was not going to be a good day. He had thought that they had gotten away from the teachers last night, but if they were interrogating Takashi then he would have to prepare himself for a grilling as well. Matt didn’t do well under that kind of pressure; he couldn’t even lie to his mom that, no, he hadn’t stolen Katie’s telescope. Sure, that had happened three years ago, but it was his most recent evidence that proved that _he wouldn’t be able to lie._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! Some foreshadowing and Shiro is lost (again). This one is a bit shorter but, hey, why draw it out with unnecessary details, right? I'm keeping up with this!
> 
> Chapter Title Credits: Like a Stone by Audioslave

Matt couldn’t find Shiro after their fourth period. He had been called to the dean’s office in the middle of class and no one had seen him since, so he sat alone during his lunch hour and picked nervously at his so-called meal that seemed to be a firecake with a scoop of corn on the side. It didn’t help his hungry stomach that Iverson had also made everyone run a mile after breakfast; whatever Matt hadn’t burned off, he threw up in the boys’ locker room later. 

It was not going to be a good day. He had thought that they had gotten away from the teachers last night, but if they were interrogating Takashi then he would have to prepare himself for a grilling as well. Matt didn’t do well under that kind of pressure; he couldn’t even lie to his mom that, no, he hadn’t stolen Katie’s telescope. That had happened three years ago, but it was his most recent evidence that proved that _he wouldn’t be able to lie._

And that usually wasn't a problem, since he would never get caught.

Fifth period - biology - passed slowly. He turned in his finished paper that he had worked into the early morning on and wondered if Shiro had finished his. It didn’t matter though, because he wasn’t even there to turn it in. He wasn’t anywhere. However much time he spent agonizing over the deadline was meaningless since an excused absence extends the due date of an assignment - something many students would take advantage of if they could get away with so many absences without expulsion.

He tried to focus on the worksheet in front of him. There wasn’t enough time to worry about Shiro or his own impending doom, but more than enough to study the complex nature of the human cardiovascular system. Matt took a long moment to stare at the prompt in front of him: _Describe the effects of the hormone adrenaline._

Adrenaline was perhaps the biggest ‘frenemy’ to the human body. When the brain detects danger, whether rational or not, the adrenal glands secrete the hormone that dilates blood vessels to rush blood into the muscles of the extremities and prepare them for exertion and concludes in embarrassing perspiration, the harsh pounding of the heart within the chest and a threatening demand for oxygen. 

In order to cope with the immediate needs of the body, hyperventilation elevates the oxygen levels in the bloodstream and lowers the amount of carbon dioxide, creating an unhealthy imbalance in someone’s head. This leads to dizziness, disorientation and even fainting in more severe cases. The human body’s desire to maintain a steady equilibrium within itself is what ultimately destroys it. 

Matt didn’t even realize that he was sweating until his pen slipped out of his hand. The teacher silently placed a pink clinic pass on his desk and gave him a pitiful look, which didn’t help the matter, but at least he was leaving. The symptoms circled on the paper were _nausea, feverish_ and _faint_.

He didn’t feel nauseous, but that could easily change at any given point.

There were no students in the hallway as he shuffled his way to the clinic. It was actually pretty weird, considering there were usually a handful of kids playing hooky and gambling with expulsion or taking bathroom breaks that exceeded the expected five minutes. A bot was patrolling the corridors quietly and scanned his pass before approving him.

Something strange was going on, and it had to be related to what he and Takashi had seen the night before. The burning desire to investigate and his overwhelming fear of being in trouble tugged at his churning stomach and he imagined it tearing apart within himself, spilling the acidic contents into his bloodstream and killing him. They would find him dead in the hallway and fill out a measly accident report before filing his corpse into the school morgue. Which, he thought, was really fucking disturbing to have in the first place, but being a military-style institution, it wasn’t too out of place.

The nurse sat him down and told him to hold a thermometer under his tongue. She spoke in a hushed tone and there was no light in the room except for her computer screen and the curtains were pulled around the only cot. The poor kid must have been really sick, because Matt recalled once violently puking into the trashcan and the nurse impatiently asking him when he could return to class.

Matt had a history with the nurse, but he didn’t know her name. After Nurse Edna retired, she had passed down the students’ information to the new one and gave her a heads up that Matthew Holt tended to need a break from the lessons every once in a while. She had been more lenient at the beginning of her career but quickly became impatient with him, especially after he had cried in front of her after throwing up. That wasn’t a good day and it really took a toll on his masculinity.

“Your temperature is ninety-eight point six,” she read after a few moments. The irritated roll of her tired eyes was haunting and shame washed over Matt; he felt guilty for wasting her time but he really was sick, just not in a grossly contagious way. Plastic fingernails rapidly tapped on the keyboard as he gulped down the complimentary cup of water and stale ginger cookie, although he knew he should’ve gone slowly and bided his time before being sent back to class.

The bell rung and the nurse clicked her pen, scribbling down an excuse note for his tardiness. There were still two classes left in the day - calculus and engineering - and he could push through those easily. Hell, he had one test and one quiz respectively, so all he had to do was regurgitate the material he had learned and apply it to the ‘real world problems’ that the garrison had made up. Numbers came as a soothing rhythm to Matt, as they were predictable and constant unlike every other fucking thing in his life.

She clicked her pen again and slid the slip across the desk. “Mr. Holt, if you’re having a hard time staying in class, then I suggest you take that up with your teachers. I’m sure they can accommodate with whatever sickness you keep coming down with.”

Her voice was snippity and high, almost venomous as if it was his fault he kept being sent to the clinic for a panic attack. The threat was clear in her tone, telling him that she would bring it up to the staff if he kept missing class and bothering her. It didn’t matter that his grades were good and his scores were high and he had been dealing with anxiety since he was eight years old - she was annoyed and he didn’t have the leverage. 

“I’ll do that, ma’am,” he replied meekly. He chose to ignore the ominous shuffling behind the curtain and got the hell out of there so she would stop shooting her sharp blue eyes at him.

He was right to think that the rest of the day would be easy. Calculus was a breeze, even though he had forgotten his calculator in his dorm room. It was just the damn ASTM tests that he kept mixing up in engineering, and he was distracted by the faint chatter coming from down the corridor that no one else seemed to hear or care about. Ever since he had a spitball war with a third-year asshole, the teacher had him sit closest to the wall in the back of the classroom and the student on the other side of the room. 

There was also an open vent next to his feet that really served as a window to the hallway over; it could’ve been placed before the architects decided that the air conditioning would run through the ceiling and was never closed away, or someone crashed into the wall and instead of properly fixing it, they squared it off and put a metal grate over it. Either way, it made it more difficult for Matt to focus on his work and easier for little bugs with long antennas to caress his leg hairs. 

Matt felt something poke at him and he was ready to swat away one of the roaches he had once been so afraid of before realizing that it was a lot harder than it was supposed to be. Fearing that he was about to encounter some radioactive mega-roach (because he knew the next week was bound to be pretty weird), he jerked his legs away and snapped his head to look at the vent. His heart dropped in relief when it was just someone’s finger.

Wait, that was pretty weird, too.

Whoever owned that finger was gone before he could see who it was, but a sheet of notebook paper was slipped through. It was folded in a classic write-and-tuck style like an elementary girl’s love note and had smudge marks over the creases; he didn’t have time to unfold it before the teacher noticed.

“Something interesting, Matt?” Several heads turned to look at him and he hid the note behind his thigh. So much for not disrupting the class in the middle of a quiz.

He knew his face was bright red and he stammered out, “No sir, sorry sir. T-there was just another roach.”

The teacher didn’t say anything to him, but muttered, “Yeah, I hate those lil’ fuckers.”

As soon as he looked away, Matt opened the note. The blue ink was still wet and blurry but he was able to decipher the text.

_IMPORTANT: On weekend probation. Explain later, meet me here after curfew - Shiro._

Holy shit, so he did get in trouble. At least they hadn’t caught up to Matt yet, which made him feel guilty but also super relieved. It wasn’t clear exactly what Shirogane got in trouble for, or how they knew it was him, but Matt was pretty confident that it had something to do with their previous expedition. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to risk it again, however, the aching desire to investigate tugged at his gut so he found himself hiding in the stalls when the intercom demanded that all students return to their rooms. 

Curiosity was going to be the death of him, but he wouldn’t go down alone. 

He timed the pace of the bots with three taps of his finger and darted down the halls. Of course Shiro wouldn’t let him wait until their next lunch or breakfast period; it had to be now. And of course Matt let him do that, because this was their investigation and Takashi was pretty cool to hang out with, even if his only experience with the boy was breaking into a classroom to look at the stars and then seeing an alien. 

After the patrol turned the corner, Matt crawled over to the vent that Shiro had pushed the note through. The classroom door was one of the few that required access badges to unlock, since the school was still in the process updating its security system, but the bolts in the grate had been left unscrewed for him. His fingernails were just long enough to pull and twist them out the rest of the way and he caught the metal frame before it crashed onto the floor. 

Matt went in ass-first, pushing himself through the window one leg at a time and hitting his head on the edge when he went to sit up.

“Fucking heck,” he whispered. Matt didn’t realize that Takashi was already there, watching him from his hiding spot in the cabinet under the teacher’s desk and holding a hand over his mouth to stifle his laughter. Hypocrite that he was, because Shiro’s long ass legs barely fit into the space and were tucked into his chest with his ass against the side - he looked really fucking stupid, too. It got better when he tried to roll onto the floor and ended up scooting across the dirt and sand until he was able to get his knees out of the cupboard.

But he still had that dorky grin across his face, and that was the difference between him and Matt until Matt decided to let his inhibitions go and started giggling his ass off like a dumb teenager (which he was, but wasn’t going to let himself be reminded of that). 

They sat with their backs against one of the lab tables, using the reflection of the windows across from them as a lookout in case anyone decided to come in. It took them several minutes to stop laughing and for Matt to realize that his shoulder was touching Takashi’s bicep and that their knees were awfully close to each other; Shiro didn’t seem to notice, or he didn’t care. 

A quiet part of Matt hoped that it was the latter.

“Dude,” he said between breaths. “What the hell happened?”

In the soft glow of the moon, Shiro’s cheeks were red and his eyes were glossy, but his expression turned somewhat serious. “They caught me with chicken noodle soup on my uniform and knew that it was from the can I had left in the hallway.”

It took most of his willpower not to laugh again.

“But that’s it, right?” Matt blurted out, immediately conscious as to how he was making this to be about himself with Shiro was the one who got caught. “Like, they didn’t accuse you of being in the observatory or something.”

Takashi looked at him without turning his head. “Yeah, that’s it. They don’t have a clue, or they just didn’t ask me about it. But now I can’t go out this weekend, because apparently they take their soup really seriously around here.”

Matt sighed. “Shit, dude, that sucks.”

“Yeah, I was looking forward to it,” he said. “But I did some more research that I wanted to show you. See, I think this goes deeper than we originally thought. When I was in the dean’s office, Iverson left the room for a moment and I saw a post-it note on his desk with some coordinates.”

Shiro rolled up his sleeve to reveal the numbers written on his skin. Matt had to squint to read them in the darkness, but knew them as El-Az coordinates in the celestial coordinate system. Below that pair was another, although these measured in latitude and longitude instead of altitude and azimuth. There was a calculator on the tabletop that Matt used to convert the coordinates into equatorial ones, his heart pounding as the answers were the same.

“Dude, there’s something important here. See this? They probably plan on sending some people in, but I don’t know what they’re looking for.” Matt didn’t realize that he was fiddling with his glasses as he spoke.

Shiro nodded. “Then we should get there first.”

“But you’re on probation,” Matt replied.

“So you go.”

“What?”

“Yeah, you go alone. This weekend. And we can keep in contact with our phones or something.”

Matt gaped at Shiro. Sure, he had broken rules before but nothing something so spectacularly illegal and compromising. It wouldn’t be easy to do, and he would disappoint his whole family if he got caught and expelled. The game of balancing curiosity and anxiety was certainly a tough one.

It didn’t help that Takashi was staring at him with his eyes filled with confidence and excitement. He really thought that Matt was capable of this when it would’ve been easier to write him off as a skinny white kid with an anxiety problem. He found it harder to say no to someone who seemed to really believe in him. 

Or maybe he was just his only hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope my astronomy bit was accurate because I don't know shit about that. 
> 
> Also, a firecake is something soldiers ate way back in the early American wars (Civil War, Revolutionary War, etc.) and was basically just a mixture of flour and water blackened over a fire. Pretty gross...I just wanted to share that tidbit of information!


	3. Great Expectations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! School has been piling up on me and I hit a bit of a writers block. I ended this chapter a bit sooner than I wanted to because I really need to get on with it, but the next chapter is gonna be good. Shiro's POV? We'll see...
> 
> Chapter title credit: _Great Expectations_ by Charles Dickens.

Their plan was put into action on the following Saturday morning. Matt filed into the shuttle with the restless cadets, ready to get far away from the garrison and into the closest town. There were several cities close to the school, but Kingman, Arizona was decided to be the safest and most accessible to young students.

That meant that it was just as much as a wasteland as the surrounding desert. 

There were some mountains rising along the perimeter, closing in the city like it was a bowl. The air was dry and cool, some ten degrees cooler than the more populated parts of Arizona but hot enough to have him sweating in his jeans and white _Explore the Galaxy_ t shirt. He could still smell the sunscreen he had smeared onto his skin and it blurred the text on the face of his cellphone as he tapped a message to Shiro.

_I’m here. Where did you want me to go?_

Students filed out of the county’s school bus. Matt let one of the bigger kids shove him out of the door because the girl in front of him was walking too slowly. She sneered at him but jogged over to her friends. Matt shrugged. 

It was only him that morning. Shiro had claimed that he didn’t know that eating food from the cafeteria outside of the lunch hour was really against the rules, and his reputation was so good that they only gave him weekend probation. And with the oddities going on at the garrison, such as the mysterious person in the clinic and empty hallways, it wasn’t too much of a loss; Shiro was going to conduct his own inquiry while Matt was away.

There were fourteen hours until Matt and the other kids would have to report back to the gas station on Route 66. Fourteen hours to hitchhike his way to the coordinates that he and Shiro had discovered and fourteen hours to figure out what the hell was supposed to be there - all without getting caught. The garrison had never specified any rules about students conducting alien investigations under their supervision and possibly within their property, but Matt could infer that it was definitely frowned upon and possibly illegal under a technicality.

But weren’t most great heroes considered rule-breaking rebels in their time? Yeah, Matt was going to be just fine.

_Get to I-40 ASAP. I arranged a ride for you._

Matt frowned. He didn’t know much about Shirogane, so he didn’t know what kind of ride to expect. He turned his cap around to block the blinding light from the sun and started walking south, past rows of empty buildings and small businesses until they were a trail away. The state was so foreign to him; the ground was bright orange and dusty and the skies were too clear, and if he kept his eyes down he could pretend that he was already on another planet. 

His sneakers were barely thick enough to protect his feet from the hot, fresh tar of the road. There were cones a couple hundred yards in front of him where the workers hadn’t painted on the yellow dashes, but a buggy pulled out of the intersection before that and started coming his way. Matt stepped on a tumbleweed getting out of the way.

“You Matt Holt?” The car had stopped and a man with a short beard and a scar over his eyebrow rolled down the window with a squeaky crank. Matt didn’t even know that people made cars like that anymore, and the body was rusted all to hell so he couldn’t imagine the engine being much better. 

Matt only nodded. The stranger beckoned for him to enter. “The name's Frank. Shiro said you’d be here. Back seat, push some of that shit onto the floor.”

Old soup cans and fast food wrappers littered the back of the buggy, but he could be grateful that there at least weren't any leftovers hiding in there. He sat on the leather cushion, his legs held tightly together in an attempt to hold himself far from the trash. Takashi had sent him another message, giving him a description of the man to expect. Matt glanced at the mirror to take a better look, and confirmed that he was with the right guy. Thank god, because he was not ready to be organ trafficked while hunting for a potential alien.

It took Matt several moments of quiet driving to even realize that there was another person with them. A boy who couldn’t have been much older than ten with a scowl and dark eyes sat in the front, glaring at him through the crack of the headrest and gripping the sides of the seat.

The driver hissed, “Keith, knock it off,” and the boy squinted before turning around.

Matt folded his hands and stared out the window. There had to be about fifteen more minutes with the stranger before he reached his destination. After that, he was a lone ranger with an empty terrain to explore on foot.

“So,” the man said. His accent was thick and Matt wondered how Takashi knew this guy. “Why’re you needin’ to go to the middle of nowhere? Shiro ain’t gettin’ you in trouble now, is he?”

He shook his head. One part of him was glad that the man was unaware of their plan, but the other part was frantically searching for a lie that he hoped Shiro wouldn’t sell him out on. He satisfied himself with, “No, sir. It’s, uh, for a school project. We’re splitting the work and Shiro’s doing the other stuff at the school.”

The little boy - Keith - had gone back to staring at him through the gap. Matt forced a small smile but quickly diverted his gaze to the floor. This had to be some kind of drug-induced hallucination, he thought. It was so fucking weird.

“Good,” the man grunted. “Glad he ain’t causin’ trouble over there.”

Matt didn’t know what to say. If anything, Shiro was known for not causing any trouble, ever. If this man knew so much about him, then he knew something about his past that Matt didn’t. Perhaps he was a wildchild in his youth. Maybe he even had a criminal record. That would be a _trip_. There was so much shit that he didn’t know about Takashi Shirogane and it started to make him uneasy. If he was going to do something likely illegal, then why did he agree to do it with someone who was practically a stranger to him?

The car rolled to a stop. Matt stepped out, was about to say thanks but the man spoke first.

“Comin’ back this way around noon. Catch a ride from us if you need one.”

Then the car drove away. Through the window, he could see the eyes of the strange kid glowering at him for a few more moments before being too far away to see. 

_Made it. Who tf were they?_

Matt was standing on the side of the road. A vacant car wash stood fifty yards away, vandalized all to shit and covered in garbage. That was going to be his landmark for when he made his way back, and he was hoping that there wasn’t a similar one on another road. It would certainly match the state’s culture to have several copies of the same washed out building.

_My family. Hope Keith wasn’t too weird._

His family? Shiro looked nothing like those two, and he certainly didn’t hold the heavy southern accent of the driver. He’d have to ask him about it later; now, he had a two-mile trek to the coordinates written on the crumpled sheet of notebook paper that Shiro had found.

It was supposed to be all desert from then on, and by the looks of it, Matt knew to keep those expectations. He could look back and still see the road, no matter how far he was from it; the stark contrast of black and light orange was hard to miss.

The old school global positioning system that his dad had given him for his fourteenth birthday was finally coming in handy. It was a simple rectangle with a dark screen that told him where he was and known to be hard to trace. Even if they did detect him, they wouldn’t be able to identify him. His dad told him that he had gotten it from a friend in the army and wasn’t really being sold to the public because no civilian wanted a GPS that didn’t come with a cute little voice to give them directions.

Matt didn’t have to worry about relying on his easy-to-detect cellphone, so he turned off the location feature and stuffed it in his pocket. 

He had almost walked past his destination before the GPS alerted him that he had made it. The walk had been a lot shorter than he had anticipated, and looking back he could even see the car wash he had first come upon. It was a meager dot in his vision, but it was still more than what he was expecting.

There were a few hills rising across the horizon, but nothing beyond that. It was empty. A lone tumbleweed tossed in the wind like it was straight out of a movie. Matt could've laughed, because of course he would see it do that in the middle of goddamn nowhere in the hellish state of Arizona. Tumbleweeds were _not_ the type of invasive species he was looking for.

It wasn’t like he was expecting an alien spacecraft to have crashed onto the planet. He wasn’t expecting to be the first man to come into contact with another intelligent species. However, he did want to find something to show for his efforts, because it wasn’t every weekend that a boy from snowy Michigan would want to trek into the open desert by himself. 

“Goddamn,” he sighed. He had sunk to the ground and sat on his knees, letting his hands run through the unfamiliar sand. His fingers dug into the earth and his eyes wandered off into a blank gaze until he touched something that was very much not sand, but metal.

Metal. Sunlight glared off of its surface and was hot to the touch, but it was metal. Matt continued to dig deeper and found a couple more fragments that were no bigger than the palm of his hand and ridiculously sharp around the edges. Trying to avoid cutting himself, he wrapped them in the paper and put them in his bag.

_DUDE. i found METAL in the EARTH_

He looked past the holes he had dug and would’ve violated more of Mother Nature if he didn’t notice the faint hint of footprints. They were small, as if they belonged to a child. Matt would hate to know what family let their kid roam the desert freely.

What was most curious about the prints was that they only went away from where he had found the metal, and there was no indication that the person had ever walked away. Double checking to make sure he wasn’t observing his own footprints, he started following the stranger’s path to hopefully see where they might have gone.

_Footprints, too. wtf. Only go one way, though. I’m gonna follow them_

Shiro hadn’t responded to his last text. That was fine, because he was probably getting started on his own investigation.

They both had a long way to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I don't think Keith is going to be a major part of this story, so he doesn't have his character tagged on the fic.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Did you notice some references within the text?


End file.
